The Elder Scrolls Online

[Draegan]

I really liked the early ability system that allowed for alot of interesting builds (most of which were sub-optimal while a few were too good). Unfortunately alot of the freedom was exchanged for balancing later on. Also some of the dungeons were actually challenging early on in expert mode (atleast for me) until they "fixed" those too. Hell, I even liked the first raid-zone (greenscale's blight).

Greenscale's Blight was really fun. Very minimal trash (which dropped loot) and some very fun fights. The fights themselves weren't very long so if you wiped, there wasn't that much of a setup or you really didn't have to spend 15 minutes getting back to the point in where you lost it last time.

River of Souls was a fucking shitstain of a raid, but the fights were kind of cool but the whole place had way too many trash packs. It was annoying.

Even the 10 man raids they put out were actually pretty fun.

Hammerknell was downright awful. Fuck that place. That's the raid that broke me.

[sam, an eggplant]

I really liked the macro system in RIFT. It let me condense a bunch of abilities into 2-3 keys.

Surely you will agree that forcing players to macro their abilities together to perform optimally is poor design. If not, there's a huge gulf between us that will never be bridged.

[Draegan]

I really liked the macro system in RIFT. It let me condense a bunch of abilities into 2-3 keys.

Surely you will agree that forcing players to macro their abilities together to perform optimally is poor design. If not, there's a huge gulf between us that will never be bridged.

Well sure, I would never design that system on purpose. It was fucking retarded. But I think a hotbar combat system with more than 5 buttons is stupid. To me it's the best solution for what DIKU combat has turned in to. We evolved from autoattacks and occasionally bashing, kicking, backstabing in combat or casting fireball 10x and meditating. to getting rid of autos or "white damage" and spamming a dozen abilities on various cooldowns.

I'm all for action combat, but if it's not a TERA-like game, the fewer the abilities and the more automated the better.

[sam, an eggplant]

Limited action sets are current design, as seen in GW2, wildstar, and ESO, and the best way to do it. They work fine and are infinitely better than macroing dozens of abilities together.

WoW doesn't have limited action sets, but it doesn't allow macroed abilities, which naturally led to less redundant abilities. Since they aren't strictly limited WoW has struggled against that problem forever. But at least they acknowledge it is a problem.

[Signe]

The quick slots in this game are stupid.

[Draegan]

Consolitis 2-3 years before (if ever) this sees a console. I never used them.

[KallDrexx]

Limited action sets are current design, as seen in GW2, wildstar, and ESO, and the best way to do it. They work fine and are infinitely better than macroing dozens of abilities together

2-3 of those games are dying.   And GW2 actually ends up having deceivingly more action buttons than it tries to portray. 

Not that I agree, I really want a good MMO that sticks to limited number of abilities at one time (like GW1), but it's far from the current trend.

[Threash]

But it is the current trend, ESO also has limited action sets, so does DCUO.  In fact i can't think of a recent mmo without them.  SWTOR i guess, and everyone bitched non stop about the huge number of buttons.

[Ingmar]

SWTOR has the button thing under control now, but it's still not what anyone (besides Eldaec) would call limited.

[Nebu]

SWTOR has the button thing under control now, but it's still not what anyone (besides Eldaec) would call limited.

I wouldn't say that... at all.  I was still using 3 full hotbars if you include CC, adrenals, medpacks, and the like.  I quit SWTOR again after doing a few hardmodes because the button smashing took away from being able to enjoy the game.

[Zetor]

SWTOR has the button thing under control now, but it's still not what anyone (besides Eldaec) would call limited.

I wouldn't say that... at all.  I was still using 3 full hotbars if you include CC, adrenals, medpacks, and the like.  I quit SWTOR again after doing a few hardmodes because the button smashing took away from being able to enjoy the game.

I think it depends on class. As someone who likes buttons (LOTRO loremaster represent!) I was OK with the number of buttons on my sage and operative (especially since there's a clear separation between "buttons to use when healing", "buttons to use when killing", "buttons to use when trolling people in pvp"), but playing a sentinel was REALLY annoying.

OK, there were a few survivability buttons that I didn't have any problems with, but actually doing damage required a very time-sensitive priority system / rotation that required a lot of busywork as well as hitting many buttons that basically did the same thing (single-target or cleave damage) with different resource requirements, cooldowns, and procs. Yeah ok, if I line up my procs and CD abilities just right and use my longer-cooldown channeled attack during burst window ability #1, I'll do 17.63% more dps than if I just hit buttons as they light up... that's not exciting gameplay, sorry. I'll take WOW arms warrior from MOP over that shit any day: even though my dps 'rotation' was basically 4 buttons, it was still a heck of a lot more engaging, reactive, and fun.

e: whoops, forgot to say that this is post-3.0

[Paelos]

SWTOR still has too much shit. There's no reason for that game to have more than 5 real abilities, some consumables, and a buff bar on the right for situational cooldowns. And yet, there's still too much.

[Ingmar]

SWTOR has the button thing under control now, but it's still not what anyone (besides Eldaec) would call limited.

I wouldn't say that... at all.  I was still using 3 full hotbars if you include CC, adrenals, medpacks, and the like.  I quit SWTOR again after doing a few hardmodes because the button smashing took away from being able to enjoy the game.

This is in 3.0, and they were all buttons you were acutally using? Post-3.0 you should be able to fit all your relevant class abilities for the type of activity you're doing on 2 bars. I actually had room to move my medpacks down to the bottom of the screen from the sides, it was exciting.

[Nebu]

This is in 3.0, and they were all buttons you were acutally using? Post-3.0 you should be able to fit all your relevant class abilities for the type of activity you're doing on 2 bars. I actually had room to move my medpacks down to the bottom of the screen from the sides, it was exciting.

2 bars, 24 fucking buttons... WAY TOO MUCH!

[Ingmar]

Well, for my main character that's including stuff like defensive cooldowns, etc. It's something like 7-9 buttons that I hit often enough to call part of a rotation.

Granted I'd need a second bar config for PVP if I was doing that...

[Nebu]

Well, for my main character that's including stuff like defensive cooldowns, etc. It's something like 7-9 buttons that I hit often enough to call part of a rotation.

Granted I'd need a second bar config for PVP if I was doing that...

PvP in star wars is a nightmare of buttons.  Your normal rotation + defensive cooldowns + interrupts + etc. 

If I can't do everything in 1 hotbar, it's too much.

[sam, an eggplant]

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/01/eb-games-is-removing-all-copies-of-elder-scrolls-online-from-stores/

OMG OMG OMG it's happening it's happening OMG OMG!!!

Looks likely, anyway.

[MisterNoisy]

About time - I'm surprised they fought it this long.

[Tannhauser]

This is good news.  I'll jump in if it goes f2p, hopefully their model is not as restrictive as SOME games *glances over at SWTOR*.

[sam, an eggplant]

I'm right there with you, if it goes F2P I'm in.

[Ginaz]

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/01/eb-games-is-removing-all-copies-of-elder-scrolls-online-from-stores/

OMG OMG OMG it's happening it's happening OMG OMG!!!

Looks likely, anyway.

From what I heard, the reason they did that was because ESO was kind of overstocked after the holiday buying period.  They did the same thing with Destiny and The Evil Within. 
http://www.mcvpacific.com/news/read/elder-scrolls-stock-removal-just-part-of-normal-stock-recall/0143646

There is a rumour, though, that Zenimax is going to have some sort of "major" announcement next week.  Might be about the console release, maybe conversion to b2b/f2p or something about both.

[Sir T]

STOP SPOILING OUR FANTASIES DAMMIT!!!

[Paelos]

IF they go F2P now, the console release is dead in my mind for good.

[sam, an eggplant]

IF they go F2P now, the console release is dead in my mind for good.

Why? A buy2play console MMO could do extremely well.

[Paelos]

For other games yes. Not this one.

[Lantyssa]

Has anything about ESO led you to think they're making intelligent business decisions though?

[Rendakor]

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/01/eb-games-is-removing-all-copies-of-elder-scrolls-online-from-stores/

OMG OMG OMG it's happening it's happening OMG OMG!!!

Looks likely, anyway.

From what I heard, the reason they did that was because ESO was kind of overstocked after the holiday buying period.  They did the same thing with Destiny and The Evil Within. 
http://www.mcvpacific.com/news/read/elder-scrolls-stock-removal-just-part-of-normal-stock-recall/0143646

There is a rumour, though, that Zenimax is going to have some sort of "major" announcement next week.  Might be about the console release, maybe conversion to b2b/f2p or something about both.

That just means they were shipped in the same box. Per the Kotaku article, there are still copies of Destiny and Evil Within on the shelves, they just shipped some back because it wasn't selling well at that particular location. They shipped out all of the ESO copies (which does sometimes happen) but telling is that they also shipped out all of the pre-paid cards and those things are never shipped around for stock balancing reasons.

[Signe]

I bought a month of ESO.  It's not awful but it's absolutely not the next big thing.  It really needs a big cleanup.  There are bugs that make me mad... like not being able to update or finish certain quests.  I hate wasting time and ending up frustrated.  Some of the quests are relatively lengthy, too.  I'll probably let it run out and check it again after the giant miracle patch.  Someone told me that the patch notes are up to 60+ pages.  I don't know if I should believe that though.  It might have been a joke and I'm very, very gullible.  :(  There will be a very involved justice system and champion system.  I'm really interested in seeing how the justice system works.  PvP kind of sucks but that's on their list, too.  I'll probably be able to make 30 before the sub runs out.  Maybe.  Something is supposed to happen at level 30 but I forget what.  They're allegedly going to revamp crafting, too, especially the provisioning which is really terrible.

Anyway, that's what I've done.  Just so you know.

[Tannhauser]

Do they have an AH yet?

The crafting was kind of interesting to me.

[sam, an eggplant]

No, but there are established trading house guilds you can join. They supposedly work fine, and have the advantage of allowing you to teleport close to anyone in your guild. In large trading guilds, that means you can teleport anywhere, anytime.

ESO faced the same problem as Diablo 3-- it uses regional "megaservers". So if all players had access to the same global auctionhouse, the market would immediately become hyper-efficient, driving prices way down on commodity items and hyper-inflating currency. You'd be able to purchase incredibly powerful items super-cheaply while leveling, rendering item drops and quest rewards garbage and short-circuiting the reward loop inherent in RPG progression. And then once you hit the elder game "good" items would be fantastically expensive.

That assumes enough people play the game to have that effect, of course. As is, I kinda doubt it.

[Signe]

That's the thing I miss the most... an AH.  I did join a guild and there's a store but the whole guild store thingy is not fun at all.  This justice system, crafting revamps and all the stuff they've been promising will have to be really good to make up for it. 

[Montague]

Console launch June 9th, sub-free starting March 17th

http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/2015/01/21/eso-heads-to-consoles-june-9th

[Fabricated]

We did it everybody

[tmp]

Limited action sets are current design, as seen in GW2, wildstar, and ESO, and the best way to do it. They work fine and are infinitely better than macroing dozens of abilities together.

I'm under impression the current design is in general trying to make these games more action-like, so the next logical step is clearly to require a controller and put all moves under 4 buttons and right stick combos

[Falconeer]

Finally, The game is not bad at all, but didn't feel like paying a subscription. Free to play with box subscription means I can pop in to check stuff whenever I want. It won't give them the money they hoped to get when they financed it, but from now on it'll do it good, as it has for so many other MMOs.